Move over spherical cow, circular cat is my new best friend

Possibly one of my favourite series, period. The first book is objectively hard to get into. (The writing is a little rougher than the later novels, and the in media res start + Erikson’s… anthropological(?) approach to world building (where history and culture are complicated, everyone disagrees about everything, anyone who can tell you something about the world with certainty either refuses, or is lying) leaves you needing to work hard to understand what’s going on while not being sure if the effort is worth it.)

And then book two shares almost no characters and takes place on an entirely different continent, only tangentially connecting to the main plot. :P But if you can get over the shock of that (and get through the first book to get here to begin with) Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice (books two and three) are genuine works of art, and the rest of the series is of similar quality.

Realistically, this is a complicated issue. I can understand wanting to modernize older works (wanting to share something you enjoyed, but struggling because said thing has not aged well), but part of the value of those works is in the view they give of the past.

The important part if this is going to become commonplace, I think, is making sure the process is transparent and the originals preserved; EG, if a book is going to be edited, it needs to be explicit (in the new version) that it was editied, what was edited, and why it was changed. It’s one thing to tweak something so that it can still be enjoyed, it’s another to try to forget it was problematic in the first place.

That all said, I find I agree with Pullman, here; I doubt the publisher is motivated to do this by anything other than sales. Let new authors find their place, instead of whitewashing the works of dead men to turn a quick buck. /shurg

Malazan is one of the all-time greats, IMO. Took me a couple years to get through, (had to take breaks with lighter books every now and again, especially in the back half) but what a ride, holy crap. Memories of Ice in particular was amazing. Itkovian remains one of the most compelling characters for me.

Slowly working my way through Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary on breaks at work. Not far enough in yet to have a firm opinion on it.

In terms of stuff I have opinions on, I just recently finished Robert Jackson Bennett’s Locklands. The Founders Trilogy was overall was a fascinating read. Not 100% sure how I feel about the ending, but I loved the world, characters, and language/definitions as magic. (Kind of hard not to, as an engineer specializing in how tech and software interface with biological systems. :P)